In the April 2010 issue American's 1st Freedom the Executive Vice President of the NRA; Wayne LaPierre authored an article called "First Amendment Confirms Freedom to Think for Ourselves." Anyone following the papers knows in January the Supreme Court overturned the ban on pre-election corporate political speech in Citizens United v. Federal Election.
The fact of the matter is main stream media portends to limit free speech as long as it is not their free speech according to Ruth Marcus. Ruth Marcus is a columnist at the Washington Post; she studied at Yale University and is married to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. It was reported in the Washington Post on Jan. 23, 2010 Columnist Ruth Marcus said…
in opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...Wayne LaPierre response to the fuming words of Ruth Marcus...
"Intellectual Dishonesty?" That defines the near universal reaction of the media and anti-First amendment politicians
He goes on to say the landmark decision …
In its 5-4 decision, the high court struck down the onerous sections of the BCRA that made it a felony—because we are non-profit corporation—for the NRA to use dues or contributions to the association to pay for any broadcast that even obliquely refers to a federal candidate. Those criminal sanctions were locked in for 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.When congress passed the gag order on your corporate speech, it exempted media corporations, and that special exception to censorship is now gone as well—deemed unconstitutional by the court.
I would like to point out a few things, first Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post article cited above states...
In a 1982 case, the court -- in a unanimous opinion by then-Justice William Rehnquist -- noted that Congress, in writing campaign finance law, was entitled to "considerable deference" in taking into account "the particular legal and economic attributes of corporations and labor organizations" and had made "a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process." Four years later, even as it carved out an exception for nonprofit corporations, the court reaffirmed "the need to restrict the influence of political war chests funneled through the corporate form."
Let me get this straight. It is perfectly acceptable for a tycoon like Bill Gates or Donald Trump to use their vast amounts of wealth funneled through corporate form from their personal war chests to support political candidates? But when the scale is balanced now and non-profit organizations have the same power then that is somehow construed as being unfair? Wealth is wealth, no matter where it comes from. A drug dealer can support a candidate as long as they laundered their money properly.
The problem with Ruth's liberal logic is proposing to limit free speech during elections while she is allotted unlimited freedom of speech the whole time hiding behind her convenient press credentials. I see no difference in the two. If anything it is easy for one to say who gets freedom of speech when you obviously already have the upper hand in that arena. Her logic does not change the fact that we as citizens now have an avenue to let our voice be heard through the non-profit organizations that we belong to.
I am a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. The NRA is a group of like minded people that believe our Constitution means what it says and says what it means concerning our Second Amendment Right to keep and Bear Arms and shall not be infringed.
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